Ukraine has accused Russian forces of blowing up a major dam and hydroelectric power station in a part of southern Ukraine that Russia controls, sending water gushing from the facility and risking massive flooding. Officials have described the breach as an “ecological disaster”.
Ukrainian authorities have ordered hundreds of thousands of residents downriver to evacuate. Russian officials claim the dam, on the Dnipro river, was damaged by Ukrainian military strikes in the contested area.
The fallout could have broad consequences: flooded homes, streets and businesses downstream; depleted water levels upstream that help cool Europe’s largest nuclear power station; and drained supplies of drinking water to the south in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed. The dam break adds a new complex to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month, as Ukrainian forces were widely seen to be moving forward with a long-anticipated counteroffensive in patches along more than 620 miles of frontline in the east and south of Ukraine.
